Target killer dodges gallows against rules

ISLAMABAD: While eight civilians and khakis who had been accused of trying to assassinate General Pervez Musharraf have already been executed in a short span of 15 days since the lifting of moratorium on death penalty, the federal government has halted at the eleventh hour the execution of Saulat Mirza, a notorious target killer from Karachi, despite the final rejection of his mercy petition by President Mamnoon Hussain on January 1, writes Amir Mir.
Saulat Ali Khan alias Saulat Mirza was accused of killing 58 people after he was released on parole in 2004. But he was again arrested by Chaudhry Aslam and finally sentenced to death by an anti-terrorism court in Karachi (led by Judge Javed Alam) on May 24, 1999 for killing the then managing director of the Karachi Electric Supply Company (KESC), Malik Shahid Hamid, his driver (Arshad Barohi) and guard (Khan Akbar). The killings took place on July 5, 1997 in the Defence Housing Authority area. Mrs Shahnaz, the widow of Shahid Hamid, had recongnised Saulat Mirza as the person who shot dead her husband outside their Karachi residence. Shahnaz was later posted in the Pakistani High Commission in London because of the threats to her life. The Sindh High Court and the Supreme Court had subsequently dismissed Mirza’s appeals against death penalty on January 21, 2000 and September 14, 2001, respectively. The Supreme Court of Pakistan had also rejected his review appeal on March 9, 2004.
However, the mercy appeal was still pending with the Presidency for a decision which was finally rejected on January 1, 2015 by the president after the moratorium on death penalty was lifted. He was scheduled to be hanged on January 7 after the rejection of his mercy petition by the presidency. The Ministry of Interior has directed the Sindh home department [on January 5, 2015] not to seek Saulat Mirza’s death warrant from the trial court and defer his execution till further orders, despite the fact that he was supposed to be executed within a week after the rejection of his mercy petition by the president.
Earlier, in December 2014, while acting on the federal government’s advice, the Sindh government had amended its rules related to the issuance and implementation of black warrants that appointed time and place for hanging. As per the rules, a black warrant (commonly known as a death warrant) for the execution of a condemned prisoner is issued by the trial court on a request of the jailer once the mercy petition is rejected by the president after the upholding of the capital punishment by the high court and the country’s apex court. The Sindh government has now reduced the time period between the issuance of black warrants and the actual hanging from 14 to 7 days. Earlier, it was fixed between one and three weeks. According to the jail rules, condemned prisoners are given fair time to hold meetings with their family and friends. Besides, they are also entitled to make their will and given due time if they desire to get it officially registered. All these formalities will now be completed within seven days after the issuance of the black warrant.
However, Saulat Mirza has been able to dodge death for the time being. The law enforcement agencies had earlier informed the Sindh home department that Saulat Mirza was running the target killers networks from his death cell in Karachi. As a senior police official [Amanullah Niazi] tried to interfere with Mirza’s unchecked activities, he was shot dead in the port city of Karachi in 2006. Before Niazi’s murder, Saulat Mirza had his own UPS, a DVD player, and MP3 player in his jail cell. But he was consequently moved to the Machh jail in Baluchistan, in April 2014, in a bid to stop his activities and cripple his network.
It may be recalled that following the arrest of Saulat Mirza from the Karachi Airport in December 1998, the BBC had quoted senior police officials of Karachi as saying that the man is a prize catch who had admitted in his confessional video statement killing dozens of people, including Major Shahnawaz Toor, the in charge of the Pakistan chapter of the United States Drug Enforcement Agency in 1995. Saulat Mirza told journalists [when he was produced by the police at a press conference in Karachi on December 11, 1998] that he had returned from Thailand to Pakistan to carry out a few more high-profile killings. On the killing of KESC MD Shahid Hamid, he said that the deceased had served in the IMF and was arranging loans for Pakistan because of which he was eliminated.